Off the back roads in Bear Lake township is Mino Mishkiki, a 60-acre farm where Nikki Nelson Bailey and her family are reclaiming a sacred Anishinaabek food. “When we got to this land, I didn’t want to leave it,” Bailey says. “I knew this is where we had to start because we had a dream of starting a traditional farm and sugarbush.”

If you look at Benzie County on Google Maps , you’ll notice a dark green strip of land about five miles long between Platte Lake and Crystal Lake. That’s where a long-proposed scenic road would run – between U.S. Highway 31 and M-22 – taking people from Beulah into Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

Just south of Traverse City lies Hoosier Valley, an area known by locals for its natural beauty. Blair Town Hall Road rides right along the valley, and the deeper in you get, the more you sink into nature. The road shifts from pavement, to gravel, to a dirt path.

John Janssen remembers the moment he realized Lake Michigan was about to change.

John Janssen remembers the moment he realized Lake Michigan was about to change.